It is well known to those skilled in the art that olefins are a class of very important industrial chemicals which find a variety of uses in petrochemical industry such as, for example, in production of various organic compounds and polymers. Olefins can be produced by several different methods such as, for example, thermal cracking of saturated hydrocarbons and catalytic dehydrogenation of saturated hydrocarbons.
It is conventional in the dehydrogenation of saturated hydrocarbons to utilize catalysts such as platinum, nickel-kieselguhr, chromium oxide-alumina, zinc oxide-alumina, and platinum-alumina. Additionally, a platinum catalyst on a support, with or without oxygen present, is known to be one possible system for the dehydrogenation of paraffin hydrocarbons in the presence of steam.
A process for the dehydrogenation of alkanes, cycloalkanes and arylalkanes can also be carried out over a catalyst composition comprising a Group VIII metal, such as platinum, or a mixture of a Group VIII metal and a Group IVA metal, such as tin. Such catalyst is generally deposited on a support selected from the group consisting of alumina, HF-treated alumina, silica, zinc oxide, magnesia, zirconia, aluminum silicate, and Group IIA and Group IIB aluminate spinels. A dehydrogenation process can be materially improved when the process is conducted in the presence of gaseous hydrogen or mixtures of gaseous hydrogen and gaseous oxygen.
However, in the known processes, the conversion of a saturated hydrocarbon to an olefin and the selectivity thereto are generally not as high as one skilled in the art would desire. Accordingly, there is an ever-increasing need to develop a catalyst and a process for converting a saturated hydrocarbon to the more valuable olefins (hereinafter referred to as hydrocarbon conversion process). Such development would also be a significant contribution to the art and to the economy.